Sidetrack Bookshop, which opened two years ago in downtown Royal Oak, Mich., is expanding with the Caboose, a bookshop focusing on children's titles. FOX2 reported that the new space is located just a few doors down the street, at 220 W. 4th St.
"I just kept wanting more space so that we could introduce more people to more books, really almost from the beginning," said co-owner Jenny Carney, adding that it was sometimes challenging to showcase children's books in the store because of their size. The Caboose will help alleviate this issue.
The decision to expand nearby rather than elsewhere was motivated by their experience with Sidetrack Bookshop. "We love this community," Carney said. "This community is clearly hungry for the store, so I think it's a perfect place, and the space became available, and so, here we are."
With the Caboose focusing on books for young readers, the expansion will also allow Sidetrack to carry more adult titles.
Carney and her wife, Jen Brown, had originally planned to give Sidetrack two years and see how it went, but they quickly learned the shop would work out. "Almost immediately we were wildly exceeding all of our expectations and plans," Carney noted, adding that an important aspect of Sidetrack is bringing people together.
"The idea is when you bring people together, you're bringing like-minded people together," she said, "whether it's you're having a conversation with somebody that walks into the bookstore, and you find that you both love a particular subset of fantasy books or whatever, you're creating community through our book fairs, our book clubs, all of those things in person. And also you are sharing the values--the local values. We're giving back to our schools. We are doing book fairs in the schools. We share those values."